Do you struggle with weekends?

Everyone loves the weekend. Wait, they don’t. Not everyone. Some struggle with it. Others secretly dread it. And yet very few people ever talk about it.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban did a couple of years ago when they named their daughter Sunday. Asked about the significance of her name, Nicole explained in an interview how she and Keith both used to struggle on Sundays.  “If you’re lonely, Sunday is a very lonely day, and if you’re happy and you’ve got your family around you, then Sunday is a beautiful day.”

Word, Nicole. Weekends can be like birthdays in that they put a fluoro yellow highlighter through your life. If something is off, all that unstructured thinking time without the distractions of the week can feel oppressive.

For a creature of routine, weekends can be destabilising and unpredictable. And as the Kidman-Urbans point out, they can be really, really lonely. They also have a hint of the Christmases about them – you know how you’re MEANT to be all jolly and you feel like a freak if you’re not? Like that.

Even when you’re in a good place and happy with your lot, weekends can be challenging. Writer and mother of two small children, Heather Armstrong, recently admitted on her blog to dreading weekends.

I remind myself of my mother more and more every day in the sense that it’s hard for me to sit still knowing there are a million projects I could be working on. I can’t sit on the couch and read a magazine anymore, and it’s driving me crazy.

I can start to feel the anxiety creep up early Friday morning, and by dinner time I’m pacing. Surprisingly, I can sleep, but probably only because it means I don’t have to think about the following two days. And then Saturday morning when I could start the day a little more slowly, when I should take it a bit easier, I run for the kitchen, Marlo on my hip, and I start cleaning. And I don’t stop until Sunday night. Because slowing down doesn’t feel right. In fact, it makes me sick.

I am not like Heather in this regard. I CAN easily sit on the couch and read. Any time. Bring it on. It’s just that my kids won’t let me.

Truth is, my favourite thing to do on weekends is mooch around at home with my family, enjoying their company. Love it. So naturally, I’ve found a way to feel guilty about this.

The guilt manifests itself as a nagging voice inside me that insists I should be out doing weekendy things. Like visiting the growers market! And playing in the park! And having a picnic! Or going to the museum! Maybe a gallery! And the zoo! How about the aquarium! Why don’t I throw a dinner party! Book a farm stay! Or do papier-mache! Have my in-laws over for brunch! Invite some girlfriends for afternoon tea with lamingtons! Homemade! Boo-yah!

Of course I do none of this because I can’t be bothered and I’m not organised enough. And then the guilt peaks and I start feeling inadequate. I begin worrying our weekends aren’t fun or interesting enough and that’s somehow damaging to my family. Why I’m not entirely sure but there’s little point letting logic get in the way of a good guilt trip.

Here’s another First World Problem for you: when you spend your weekdays juggling work and family it can be jarring to shift to a single focus on weekends. I try to put strict boundaries and barbed wire fences around my weekends in a desperate bid to quarantine ‘home time’ from ‘work time’. In theory, I don’t check my emails, I don’t surf, I try not to look at Mamamia, I stay off Twitter.

In practice, I suck. In weak moments I will invariably clamber over the razor wire separating home from work and stagger, slashed, bleeding and desperate towards the Internet. I blame my iphone for this because I’m not carrying around a phone anymore, I’m carrying around a damn computer.  I love it but it tempts me so.

There are other challenges being at home full-time on the weekend. With work, no matter how overwhelmed I am, how utterly swamped with demands and deadlines and disasters urgently needing to be averted, there is still a level of order, no matter how tenuous. Allow me to be specific. In my work life, nobody vomits into my hair. Nobody flatly refuses to get dressed because “clothes touching my body makes me ITCHY”. Nobody puts my shoes in the toilet. Compared to all that, the demands of my working week follow a satisfying degree of logic and order. Because there is no order with small children. Nor logic. Not in my house anyway. Not when I’m in charge.

After kids, your weekends change entirely. I’m not complaining about this or wishing it was different but let’s be honest. All the things you traditionally associated with weekends – sleeping in, late nights, leisurely brunch – are gone. Poof. Buh-bye. In their place is 48 hours of intense.

For parents who work outside the house, the weekend can be a welcome opportunity to do the quality time thing. For stay-at-home parents it can bring an influx of extra support in the form of a partner. Alternatively (for single parents, say) it can be hard work. Ditto all the golf, cricket, cycling and sailing widows whose partners spend weekends doing hours of sport, leaving them holding the fort and often the kids.

The good news for people who struggle with weekends? If you’re reading this, you’re more than halfway.

How do you cope with your weekends?  Are they a welcome distraction from the monotony of your week or do you struggle through them wishing for Monday?

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